


The Other Woman

by TrueCaesar



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Feelings Realization, Love Triangles, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24862021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrueCaesar/pseuds/TrueCaesar
Summary: Who really is the other woman in Shaun Murphy's life?
Relationships: Carly Lever/Shaun Murphy, Lea Dilallo & Shaun Murphy, Lea Dilallo/Shaun Murphy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	The Other Woman

For Carly Lever, her boyfriend was a sweet addition to an already rich and fulfilling life.

Her career was exciting and important, her loved ones nearby and supportive, and her personal life had taken a definite upswing in recent weeks. As head of St. Bonaventure’s Pathology Department, she was well compensated and uniquely challenged to find the answers to each day’s new mysteries.

Her tentative first date with St. Bonaventure’s most unique employee had blossomed into a full-blown relationship filled with fun and firsts. For Carly, it was an opportunity to date without the pressure that might usually have been exerted on her to perform all the right moves, provide all the right cues, and key in to all her partner’s subtle, unspoken signals. Shaun Murphy did not do unspoken signals. He didn’t care if she made the right moves and he was almost always oblivious to any subconscious cues she may have been providing.

It was, in many ways, a no pressure relationship.

Which isn’t to say that Carly didn’t feel _any_ pressure. She liked Shaun; she really did. He was a sweetheart in his own unique way. In his effort to compensate for his poor understanding of social cues, he would sometimes overcompensate by seeming to pour his very soul into efforts of self-sacrifice so that she might feel comfortable. Pulling nearly an all-nighter with her on the floor of the Path lab just so that she could get caught up on her backlog of work was just one example of the utter selflessness Shaun was capable of. It was hard _not_ to fall for someone who was so utterly devoted to her comfort.

So, yes, there was a certain degree of pressure to make Shaun’s first romantic relationship exciting and enjoyable.

Overall, however, Carly had never felt more at ease in a relationship. Shaun’s awkward nature, his peculiarities, were tamer by far than when he had first begun working at the hospital. She recalled with humor the first time she had met him and how he had threatened to throw a rock through her window to get faster lab results for a patient. She felt uniquely equipped to handle some of Shaun’s more difficult quirks due to having a lifetime of experience helping to care for her own sister with ASD.

They were moving slow, but his kisses were becoming more frequent and far more enthusiastic. It was clear that he was responding to her guidance and soon, Carly hoped to take their relationship to the next level. She was confident she could help maneuver Shaun into a more intimate relationship in time.

The one aspect of Shaun’s personality Carly _did not_ feel close to locking into a more appropriate place was his inexplicable relationship with Lea.

It was hard not to think of the lively, free-spirited roommate as anything but an interloper; the smiling, sauntering _other woman_ whose shadow hung over Carly’s relationship.

She did not want to deprive Shaun of his friends. Lord knows they were few enough and Lea held a special place as the first true friend of his own age her boyfriend had ever had. But it was hard not to feel threatened by a woman who occupied such a warm, exalted place in Shaun’s mind, whose daily, _nightly_ presence in Shaun’s apartment, and the charged past they shared together, practically begged for a late night rendezvous in every romance drama Carly had ever watched. Lea’s constant presence, and Shaun’s steadfast of commitment to her close presence was a source of worry and irritation.

The one thing that kept her reasonably confident that Shaun would not prove unfaithful to her was the simple fact that Shaun was _not_ like other men, despite his attempts to be. It was far more likely that he would dismiss a pass by Lea as mere friendliness and not take the bait to make it more.

She wasn’t sure what the source of the hold Lea had on Shaun was, but she was determined to reach the root eventually. She knew from her few brief meetings with her that the other woman was attractive, which was, in itself, threatening. Her nature appeared to be the very height of flirtatious. Had Shaun been any other man Carly might have started something at the way Lea’s hand always found a way to reach out to him, or how her eyes always softened whenever he spoke, or how her smile found a way to be both so adoring _and_ brazen whenever he was the recipient.

But Lea had a boyfriend…or, at least, a man she was sleeping with. Shaun didn’t seem to like to talk about that. Perhaps another cause of worry. She couldn’t help but notice, though, that this boyfriend was rarely ever mentioned directly by Lea herself. Whenever Carly found herself forced to endure her presence when she came to Shaun’s apartment, Lea could never stop gushing about Shaun; something he’d said, something he’d done, or worse yet something they’d done together. It was annoying. It was threatening. It was an affront to their relationship.

And Carly was at a loss of how to deal with it.

* * *

For Lea Dilallo, her best friend was the only consistently bright spot in an uncertain, tumultuous life.

Her career was empty and unfulfilling, her loved ones far away or nonexistent, depending on which of her screw ups she’d decided to dwell on, and her personal life was a revolving door of shallow, empty relationships which the euphoria of sex could only ever momentarily glamorize.

Ever since her return to San Jose she had been grappling with difficult feelings she’d at first been willing to try and embrace, before frantically backpedaling after Shaun’s less than enthusiastic ‘welcome home’ had nearly tanked their friendship.

When she’d raced across the country to put as much distance between herself and Hershey as she possibly could, she’d felt that she was returning to a person who could provide genuine comfort. He _could_ be so sweet sometimes, so unpretentiously pure. Instead of that purity, though, she’d been met with a chilliness that had never been there before, and a yawning void that had threatened to swallow up the most genuine adult relationship she’d ever shared with someone.

Thankfully, and Lea counted herself fortunate every day that their breach had been healed, their friendship had resumed. But it had come at a cost. The cautious, romantic feelings she’d allowed herself to feel prior to her move to Hershey, which if anything had only grown more potent in her absence, she’d had to hastily trample down as it became clear that entering into a romantic relationship with Shaun Murphy was beyond her capacity to endure. He was cute. He was sweet. He was genuine and not at all a bad kisser for someone so sheltered his whole life.

But he was also emotionally unavailable and could be callous in his unintended selfishness. It was too much for Lea to commit herself to. So, regretfully, but convinced that she was right, Lea had backed away from any thoughts of romance and firmly erected “just friends” walls around their relationship. But it hadn’t taken long before one such wall was knocked down and replaced with “just roommates.” So now, “just friends” and “just roommates” interacted together on a daily basis and it was proving a damn sight harder than she was comfortable with to keep those walls strong.

When she’d heard about the quarantine at the hospital last Christmas and that Shaun had been caught up in it, her heart had dropped somewhere south of hell and it had been all she could do to keep it together, which she’d done more for Glassy’s sake than her own.

 _“I delivered a baby,”_ Shaun had said with such soft-spoken pride in his accomplishment that her mind had gone, unbidden, to a place where “daddy just shows his love in a different way” applied to far more than just a fish.

Why else had she allowed herself to be talked into a relationship with Jake? _If you can even call it a relationship_ , she groused moodily. The things she shared with Jake were the exact sorts of things she’d shared with everyone else she’d dated and found wanting. Music, parties, and sex. Music, parties, and sex. Rinse and repeat. She remembered vividly, not so long ago, the day she had sworn to herself to find herself a man who reminded her of Shaun. Of course, that had soon changed to _Well, why not Shaun?_ Yet now, she’d found herself running back to the safe space of Music, parties, and sex because the future she thought she might find on returning to California was worming its way into her imagination again. _And with babies, no less_.

And then there was Carly.

Don’t get it wrong. Lea _liked_ Carly. She thought that she was smart, attractive, and she didn’t seem to be using Shaun as some sort of placeholder or pet project, which was good. Lea would have been _very_ unhappy if she’d picked up that sort of vibe.

She just didn’t like that Carly was with _Shaun_. And _that_ , both their relationship, and her own negative feelings about it, bothered her a lot.

If she was being absolutely, brutally honest, the way that Shaun sometimes was, she hadn’t expected Shaun to pick up a girlfriend. It didn’t exactly reflect well on her, she knew that, but she had sort of imagined that she was the only woman lucky enough to have seen the potential in the brilliant young surgeon. She’d been foolish to think so. Shaun _was_ a catch. Yes, he was awkward, stubborn, and sometimes emotionally limited…but he could learn, the way he’d learned to like hugs. The way he’d learned to drive a car. The way he’d learned to appreciate music. _Because of me_ , she reflected quietly. _He learned to change because of me._ It hit her like a ton of bricks.

Shaun _had_ changed his behaviors; at least as much as he could, and it was still ongoing. How else could he have worked up the nerve to even _ask_ Carly on a date? How else could Shaun Murphy have managed to _keep_ this sort of relationship going for as long as he had? Because he _had learned._ Everything Lea had taught him, he had applied. The very lack of change she had cited as justification for her change of feelings…he had somehow turned into very real change.

As Lea struggled to come to grips with the fact that her best friend had, in fact, become the very thing _she_ had been seeking, she couldn’t help but marvel at the man. Yes, he was _quite_ a catch. And she was in _quite_ a predicament.

How many women could say they were living with their best friend who happened to be a doctor, and not just any doctor but a damn _surgeon_ , who literally was unlike any other man in the world, who had overcome an actual disease, to the extent they were able, to change their way of communicating so as to be emotionally available for a woman? Who also happened to be tall, genius-tier intelligent, with boyish good looks and the most _striking_ pair of blue eyes? How many women could claim that such a man had expressed an interest in a romantic relationship with them, that she had driven across country to be with him, and that she had _missed_ _her chance?_

It was a gut punch as harsh as any she’d received in Hershey.

Now Carly was the one who could reap the rewards of the seeds Lea had planted. Carly was the one who got to spend time with him while they were at work, and afterwards, when the proprieties of professionalism could be shed. Now Carly was the one who could go on road trips with him or sing karaoke or do stupid shots that led to experimental kisses. Only, their kisses would not be an experiment. They would be kisses born of comfortable familiarity. And perhaps, one day, even love.

When she remembered the days before, before Hershey, before every other roadblock that had fallen in her way…when she thought of how her Shaun had grown in such a short time and how he spent his days trying to make another woman happy…Lea could not help but feel threatened by the intelligent, articulate woman who was so much more on Shaun’s level than she could ever hope to be.

She could not help but view Carly Lever as an interloper. A smiling, sauntering, _other woman_ whose shadow hung over their relationship.


End file.
